"Maybe I'll know it in the course of time, deacon, if I keep on a-learnin'."
"Maybe you will,—if you do keep on. But you didn't say anything about your hope of salvation, nor the atonement, nor your being nothing through your own strength."
"I couldn't say it if I didn't know about it," Sam replied. "All my troubles an' wrong doin's have come of not livin' right: so right livin' is all I've had time to think about an' study up."
"You need to think about dying as well as living," said the deacon.
"Him that took care of another thief that was dyin' 'll take care of me if I get in that fix, I guess, if I hang on to Him tight."
"Not unless you hang on in the right way," said the deacon. "You must believe what all Christians believe, if you want to be saved. You don't feel that you're prepared to die, do you?"
"I felt it a good many times, deacon, when I was in that jail; an' sometimes I half wished I could die right away."
"Pshaw!" muttered the deacon. "You don't understand. You're groping in darkness. You don't understand."
"That's so, deacon, if you mean I don't understand what you're drivin' at."
"Don't you feel Christ in you the hope of glory?"